A Crash Course On Barn Conversion

Now that home values in cities around the UK have increased significantly, people are now looking at properties in the countryside.

For people who really want to revel in the countryside charm and are adventurous enough to incorporate the theme into their homes, one piece of advice I can give is to renovate an existing barn to get the 360 degree country feel without necessarily living among hay and animal dirt.

First agenda on our property renovation checklist: where do you find the perfect barns for property renovation? Interested renovators can:

Ask the local authorities if any barns in the area had been previously issued a planning permission;

Search through local paper advertisements or online property services; or

Ask real estate agents.

Before you start thinking of over the top renovations for your barn, your property success in renovation rests on sticking to the barn’s original heritage and purpose. If you modify the structure too much, then the whole charm of living in a barn would disappear.

Let’s start with the layout. Barns are tall, long, and narrow buildings, and this basic stucture will dictate how you can divide the interiors of the house.

One way to go around this limitation is to create a central hallway for easy access and circulation around the building. You can also build separate staircases, not only to maximise the space provided at the top, but also to provide easy access to rooms upstairs.

Another thing to consider when renovating barns is how to smartly introduce natural lighting into the design.

Movies set in barns would have you believe that these places have tons of light streaming in to these structures. That is a big movie lie. Usually, barns only have small openings at the top for ventilation and their big cart doors as entry ways of light, so bringing in light into these buildings is a big, big challenge.

A popular solution to this problem is by using open plan living arrangements. This strategy helps feature the immense space of barns and lets in light very easily.

Some renovators offering property renovation courses use the following solutions to successfully intoduce into dim barns:

Adding conservation-style rooflights on less prominent elevations;

Using glass pantiles or discreet ridge glazing;

Gazing entire gable ends; and

Applying full-height glazing to cart openings.

When done right, barn conversions can be a nice place to call home.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, barns offer a lot of space at the top and base of the structure. Partitioning the base is easy, but utilising the area above requires renovators to add floors in order to make use of this space.

Adding floors, unfortunately, could be tricky. You’d have to mind the the slope of the roof or the collars on roof trusses. While you can’t change the roof, because you have to stay true to the barn’s original structure. You can modify the trusses to fit the plan.

Builders can use existing brick or stone walls to help support it or introduce new steel or timber frames, if the structural integrity of the new floor is an issue.

Living in a converted barn offers people the charm of country living with the comforts of modern houses. Try this project out to get the best of these two worlds!